


Brief Encounter

by BadOldWest



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, lots of cliche dates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 17:14:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14383287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/BadOldWest
Summary: First flowers, then a movie. Frank was an old-school romantic.Frank finds creative ways to meet with Karen.





	Brief Encounter

**Brief Encounter:**

This is dangerous, stupid, novel, and makes her face break out into a smile. Two tickets to an outdoor movie pinned to her front door, a familiar scrawl;

**Sunday at 8?**

First flowers, then a movie. Frank was an old-school romantic. A semi-genius way to meet, huddled next to each other on a picnic blanket under the stars, where whispering doesn’t seem odd at all in a sea of couples on the grass. Celia Johnson’s face projected eight feet high against a wind-tossed screen and speakers popping an orchestral swell all around them. It’s in plain sight, and it’s brilliant, her feeding him information, for once, leisurely, even holding back details until a specific scene is over. They aren’t checking windows, or over their shoulders. They met here from separate places. His hat doesn’t strike anyone as odd, nor does her sunglasses when arriving at the edge of dusk. Cloaked in darkness, it’s more private than her apartment, or a bench by a river, or a hospital room. 

They set out a blanket and sit out in the open and once the credits are done Frank is relaxed, his voice low and steady, their whispers seeming to be about anything but what they really are. She sips one of the beers she brought, trying to press food into his hands. He would demure until she insisted she made these sandwiches for the occasion and he was spoiling the mood. He eats gratefully after that, a wry smile on his lips. 

"Look at you, takin' care of me," he observes, and it warms her, and she swats his arm because she's aware of how they're supposed to look. Normal. Easygoing. 

She tries not to think of the last time Frank has been on a date. 

He’s stretched out on the blanket, looking relaxed because he has to, his charming smile she’s seen him use on almost everyone but her now in it’s full potential. There’s a glow of the black and white frames, sometimes casting him in brilliant white light, sometimes in cold shadow. She watches him carefully, which she can blame on their cover, nothing else. 

Her voice comes out quiet, intimate, so when it doesn’t travel no one is the wiser to why they’re meeting, why they’re meeting  _here._

“Probably fifteen guards, in the basement. It’s deep, several stories down. There was a blueprint from the 1920′s of the building that I found at the library, but they’ve had three floors off the record since the seventies. It was a speakeasy then, but now...”

Frank nods, knowing she’s found the place he has to go; she found something that didn’t exist. It’s a calculated move, but from the way the information falls thickly from her lips, he draws a circle on the skin over her knee, like she’s telling him about her day, nodding absently as he keeps tracing. She smiles, like she’s catching him doing something he shouldn’t, because he is. Very little of this is acting. It’s a dance. It’s trust.

It’s a whispering kind of movie,  _Brief Encounter,_  full of smoke and shadows and a camera frame bringing people together and likewise ripping them apart. 

She shivers, and he gives her his jacket, and it’s all pretend but that doesn’t stop it from being nice. 

“Does this mean we’re going steady?” she can’t help but tease, and he groans and chuckles at the same time. He’s quiet for the movie. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was actually watching it. 

She’s half watching. Poor Laura. Poor doomed love. Meeting in between-places, alleys and train platforms and diners at late hours, sitting on opposite sides of a table and trying to hide that you're giving everything of yourself. Smiling like you want the other person to know anyway. 

She rests herself by his side, and they don’t touch, but the proximity soothes. 

“This park does this every month,” Frank tells her, and it’s almost like he’s asking her on an actual date. It’s sort of a promise. Not just an ideal meet-up for them; cash only, anonymity, crowds, the implication that there’s a don’t-ask-don’t-tell attitude about the activities on individual blankets. There’s an operatic rise of breathy moans from a couple twenty feet away, but it doesn’t strike Karen as vulgar, just natural, with everyone sweating and sipping beer from their brought coolers and brushing skin while Laura and Alec make hushed plans to run away together. 

She nods, non-committal, like the date went well but she didn’t want to give herself away. It’s sort of a yes. 

She closes her eyes and Celia Johnson speaks;

_“This can't last. This misery can't last. I must remember that and try to control myself. Nothing lasts really. Neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long. There'll come a time in the future when I shan't mind about this anymore, when I can look back and say quite peacefully and cheerfully how silly I was. No, no, I don't want that time to come ever. I want to remember every minute, always, always to the end of my days.“_

Frank is silent and still beside her, and she presses her face to his arm, muffled in the sleeve, and gives a soft little noise. He nods, covering her hand with his, but that’s all she gets. 

Tears squeeze out of her eyes. 

“You picked the perfect spot,” she says, and it’s an acknowledgement. That they needed this. That he was smart. That sometimes, survival instincts and what they needed were the same thing.


End file.
